Friday, December 16, 2011

Homemade gift- hand and foot stamped dish towels

This year for my kids' school teachers we painted some dish towels. Inspired by this pin on Pinterest, I decided to go really simple and use my girls footprints to make some Christmas trees on the towels.

To do this project you will need:

flour sack dish towels (they are thin and have a flat texture so it's easy to paint on - these can sometimes be found at the dollar store, mine were not though)

acrylic paint (fabric paint can also be used, then you don't need to add the fabric medium to the paint)

fabric medium to mix with the acrylic paint - mixed at a 2:1 ratio (found on the same rack as acrylic paints)

sponge brush

I recommend that you put a piece of wax paper or something that won't stick to paint behind the surface you are going to be painting on. For some reason, I thought newspaper would work well for this. Maybe it would have been alright if I had peeled it away right after we finished painting. But . . . I let the paint dry before peeling it off so there are some newspaper bits stuck to the back of these towels (I imagine it will dissolve once they are washed). Oops.

Alright, I had one girl at a time doing this. I had her sit in a chair while I painted the bottom of her foot using the sponge brush - they loved this part because it tickled. I painted the foot green and the toes red. Then I positioned her foot over the towel and had her stand up to get a good impression on the towel. You can see the side of the tree we did without having her stand up. It didn't leave as dark of an impression. Then we repeated with the other foot. They all thought it was so funny that it looked like they had little grinch feet when we were done because acrylic paint doesn't come off the skin too easily.

After the main part of the tree was done, I used a star sponge we had on hand (from the dollar store) and had them stamp it on top of the tree. They used the sponge brush with a little bit of brown paint to make a little trunk.

And no, my daughter does not have 4 toes on the one foot. Her second toes on both feet like to stick up a bit, I didn't realize it until after the first footprint. So for the second foot, I pushed that toe down.

Lou decided after she had done the tree that she wanted to make a reindeer also using her handprint (completely her idea, by the way). We used the brown paint to cover her hand in paint, then stamped it onto the towel. She used a cotton swab to dot the nose and used a paint pen to finish off the details.

After letting the paint dry for 24 hours, I heat set the designs with the iron by pressing for 30 seconds. They should be good to wash and use now!

I am happy with the way these turned out so I think we may make a few more for some lucky lucky grandparents . . .

25 comments:

This is waaaaay cute & CLEVER!! Love it! What a wonderful idea to give to grandparents!! I would love for you to come link up at my TGIF LInky Party - http://livinglifeintentionally.blogspot.com/search/label/Linkey%20Parties - you always have such cute stuff I know my readers would love to see!!Merry Christmas,Beth =-)

Yes, once the design is heat-set with your iron (pressing on the wrong side for about 30 seconds), the towels are cometely washable. The fabric (textile) medium added to the acrylic paint will also make the painted designs soft like the fabric, and not stiff.

These look fantastic! Do you mean the back of the towels on the opposite side to the paint is the wrong side? Earlier I see you suggested placing a thin piece of cloth (like a pillowcase) over the design, and I assumed that meant over the top side of the painting? Will both ways set the paint?

Sorry for the confusion, I did say two different ways to heat set it. Either way will work, the painted area just needs to have heat set to it for 30 seconds. The first method I mentioned, ironing it design-side-up with a cloth over the top, is how I heat set the design on this project.